Ms. Bellone’s amazing grade 4 class would like to share their fabulous stories with you!
With the help of our 21st Century Literacy Specialist, Ms. Cofino, this class has brought their stories to life by taking their written pieces from their Writer’s Workshop unit and turning them into digital stories using Garage Band and iMovie. Now that their movies are digital, Ms. Bellone was able to publish them on the video sharing website, YouTube, on a channel just for her class called Team Bellone (no personally identifying information has been shared).
Being able to share their work with a global audience is one of the most motivating and engaging ways to help students get excited about writing. Most of these stories have already been viewed over 50 times! How many of your writing pieces have been viewed by 50 people around the world? And that’s only the beginning!
This digital storytelling project also introduced these wonderful grade 4 students to two new technology tools: Garage Band (used for recording your voice) and iMovie (used to combine audio and visual elements). Both of these tools are standard on all Apple computers and are just right for elementary school students to learn more about audio and video editing.
Being able to hear (and see the audio input of) their own voices telling their story helped the students understand how important emphasis, emotion and tone are in their speaking and presenting voices. Having the opportunity to practice this type of animated speaking is great preparation for both face-to-face presentations as well as further technology-based work.
Learning how to combine audio and video input into one smooth, exciting digital story, is a great way to tap into students’ creativity and higher order thinking skills. They had to figure out just how long every picture should be so that each one perfectly matched to their previously recorded audio. Many students even had the time to add a title and credits to make their story more like a movie.
Becoming active producers of creative content in a digital format is a critical aspect of 21st century literacy and an essential experience for all students at ISB. This project is part of the foundation that students need to understand the potential, impact, and appropriate use of technology tools for communication and creativity.
It’s hard to believe this was their very first experience with digital storytelling! We’re already waiting for more amazing stories from Team Bellone!
We had quite a lively discussion about online safety and responsibility this morning at our monthly Parent Technology Coffee Morning. We watched two US public service announcements about online safety and responsibility that we regularly show to students here in the ES to prompt discussion about appropriate behavior online.
Both videos prompt great discussions for students, parents and teachers. Some of the interesting points that came up during our discussion today were:
One of the most powerful ways we can help children understand about the need for responsible behavior online is to have these kinds of open conversations both at home and at school. Keeping the lines of communication open is critical to help children understand how to stay safe online.
Although technology is changing so fast, it’s important to note that parents already have all the skills and life experiences needed to guide their children through their online experiences. Basic common sense that applies to real life (don’t talk to strangers) can also be transferred directly to the online world. Although children may be more quickly able to use online tools, they still need the thoughtful guidance of their parents to help them determine what is appropriate behavior.
When these videos are shown at school (in grades 3 - 5, if/when a class begins an online project) we develop questions to help us make the best choices when we share and learn online. The questions that students develop demonstrate such thoughtful and deep understanding of online behavior that it is clear that these experiences are a part of their daily life. One question always comes up in every class: What will other people think of me if they see this?
We also discussed “red flag” warning signs for online safety. Here are a few things to watch for: anyone asking to meet your child in person, anyone asking to send your child anything through the mail, anyone asking to give your child a gift or to get specific contact information.
“Red flag” warning signs for cyberbullying can be: a child who usually loves to be on the computer suddenly doesn’t want to go anywhere near it (this could be a sign of being bullied), a child who is constantly online, snickering or laughing or shouting at the computer (could be a sign of a child acting as a bully).
As usual, we had a fabulous discussion. Thank you so much to all of the parents who take time out of their day to attend these monthly sessions.
Our next sessions will be:
Wednesday, November 5th: A Vision of Students Today: This session will be an introduction to the ways in which students learn differently than their parents did.
Wednesday, December 3rd: Information R/evolution: This session will be an introduction to the different ways that information is shared, stored, managed and found in our web 2.0 world.
Did you know you can download any videos you find online from KeepVid? All you need is the website address (URL) for the video you would like to download, and this website create a web link you can right-click on to download the video!
Our fabulous elementary teachers and students are participating in a wide range of exciting projects that help them connect to the world around them using web 2.0 tools. If you’re curious about web 2.0 or the different ways that your children will be using technology at school, please come to our monthly Parent Technology Coffee Mornings in the ES Learning Hub (the first Wednesday of every month at 7:30, as listed in the school calendar).
For now, you can get started by checking out our first projects for the school year:
Grade 5: Students Teaching Students
The wonderful Chrissy Hellyer and her fellow new ISB teacher, Aly McAloon, will be kicking off the school with a classroom blogging project that will eventually include a regular podcast focused on the Lucy Caulkins Readers Workshop. Our students will start by reading and commenting on each class’ blog, while learning about online safety and appropriate behavior, and will eventually become contributing authors to this blog. We will connect with another grade 5 class at Shanghai American School and the American School of Madrid to help engage and motivate our learners to share their learning with their classmates around the world!
Grade 4: BlogPals
Our fabulous returning teacher, Sonja Merrell, who participated in the 1001 Flat World Tales last year, is back for more 21st century learning this year! She has decided to start the school year off with a class blog, which she will use as a communication portal for her students and their parents. We’re going to start off the year using this blog as a discussion tool, to build a strong school-home connection and to get her students thinking about their learning in a more interactive way. Over time we will have each student as a contributing author to the blog, in order to record their learning and development over the course of the school year.
Grade 2: A Window to Our World
Another amazing returning colleague, Susan Souza, is connecting her class to a partner class via a tool called Ning. She conducted a similar project last year and was amazed to see how quickly her students took to this new learning environment - posting questions and answers, commenting on individual student pages, and sharing their learning as a class - all in second grade! This year the project will focus on building intercultural understanding, learning about diversity, and getting to know our collaborative partners in this private network.
Grade 1: ESL Learners Speak English
Our enthusiastic grade 1 ESL teacher, Erin DeYoung, started using VoiceThread in her classroom last year as a way for her beginning ESL students to practice their English in an authentic environment. We had a great time connecting to grade 1 ESL students at the American School of Madrid, and we’re planning to re-connect again this year. Our students will start practicing their English with an short introduction to each student so that our partner class can really get to know each person as an individual. Over time the students share a bit about their lives in Thailand, the school, and other grade 1 favorites.
Kindergarten: Kids Draw!
Our amazing Kindergarten team teachers, Sandy Chin and Akiko Nagamine, are jumping in to a new model of technology learning with their fantastic class. We have started out the year with a short unit on drawing, where the students were asked to draw a picture of themselves on paper (for a unit entitled “All About Me”) and then draw the same picture on the computer (using KidPix). We discussed what was the same and what was different about drawing on paper and drawing on the computer. Interestingly, although almost all of them though drawing on the computer was more difficult (we still need to work on those fine motor skills), most of them liked drawing on the computer better. After this short unit, Sandy, Akiko and I realized we have lots of room to grow with drawing and technology. We’d like to revisit the concept of drawing on the computer over the course of the year and build in some thoughtful reflection, ideally with VoiceThread, where students can talk about the context of the picture, and the skills they learned while drawing.
All of these projects are being facilitated by our 21st Century Literacy Specialist, Ms. Cofino, in partnership with the classroom teacher. You can keep up with all of the new and exciting developments in 21st century literacy here on the Connect 2.0 blog!
This morning we hosted our final Parent Coffee Morning of the year. We shared a brief overview of the 21st century tools that we’ve been using here in the ES all year, along with an introduction to some of these exciting tools.
The first tool we discussed is blogging:
We love blogging as a tool to extend classroom conversations beyond school time, to engage students in authentic writing for a real audience, to develop communication skills, and to document reading and writing development. There are quite a large number of class, student and administrator blogs here in the ES - check out all the links on the sidebar at right to read them!
Next we talked about wikis:
We love wikis for collaborative knowledge building and working together on a focused task with partners around the world. We talked about the benefits of being able to view the entire history (every edit of every wiki page) of all wikis to track student growth, the ease of using the discussion feature to communicate with others beyond our classroom about our learning, and the many different ways to track changes on a wiki through e-mail updates or RSS.
Then we covered RSS:
We love RSS for bringing all the information we want directly to us! We talked about using RSS to track any work your children do with web 2.0 tools at school by setting up a Google Reader account, you can actually follow along with any blog posts, wiki pages, or podcasts that your children create, as soon as they create them. This is a great way to change the typical after school conversation starter from “What did you do at school today?” to “I saw that you added a new blog post at school today, why did you choose to post about that topic?” The possibilities for staying connected with their learning are endless!
Finally, we discussed podcasting:
We love podcasting for the ability to build oral language skills, increase depth of understanding about oral communication, and the ease with which you can take podcasts with you wherever you go. Podcasting has made a huge impact on the language development of our ESL learners here at ISB and is an easy way to have students reflect on their learning in a format that is exciting, engaging and comfortable to them.
As you can see, there’s a lot going on at the ES! You can keep track of all these exciting learning experiences here on the Connect 2.0 blog.
Get ready for more Parent Coffee Mornings on the first Wednesday of (almost) every month next school year! These events will be formally noted in the official school calendar to make it easier for you to plan ahead. We hope you come back from your summer holidays rested, refreshed and ready to learn even more about 21st century literacy here at ISB!
Two of our fantastic elementary classes have recently participated in two different, but equally exciting, writing projects. Both projects involve students from around the world and both projects result in the publishing of a book authored by our students!
Grade 5
Mrs. R’s class used the group instant messaging tool, Twitter, to write a globally collaborative story as part of the @manyvoices project. Twelve upper elementary and lower middle school classes all worked together to create a fantastical fiction story 140 characters at a time, following the protocols of Twitter. Mrs. R’s class wrote chapter 10 (of 12) using their best descriptive language, in just one afternoon. As each student wrote their sentence in the story, they were able to build off the work of the previous author. What a great way to build excitement and enthusiasm about reading and writing! And what makes it even better, is that the finished story is now published as an actual book you can either buy or download!
Grade 4
Mrs. M’s class used a wiki to participate in the globally collaborative writing project, 1001 Flat World Tales, elementary group. Our students used this simple web 2.0 tool to become peer-editors for students in Australia and the United States, while developing their persuasive writing skills. We enjoyed the project so much, that we collaborated just a little bit more to create an interconnected frame story that links all of the individual student stories together.
This ongoing writing workshop involves students and classes from grade 2 all the way up to grade 12 and will continue until the end of the school year (each school division participating on a separate wiki). Once all of the participating schools are finished writing, the top stories will be selected by the students for final publishing in a book! After reading the fantastic stories from our grade 4 students, I’m sure at least one will be chosen for the final publication!
These projects are a fantastic way to engage students in their writing and to promote a lifelong love of writing, reading and learning!
Last week we had another successful Parent Coffee Morning - this time we covered some of the basics of web 2.0: blogging, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking and social networking.
We started out by watching and discussing some great, quick videos, by Common Craft:
We have quite a few student and teacher blogs here at school. We use our blogs to connect with a wider, authentic audience. The power of having a wider audience for our writing is both exciting and motivating for students and teachers! You can find all of the ES blogs linked on the sidebar to the right. Please feel free to check them out and leave some comments!
We are using wikis in several classes here at school. You might want to visit a few to get an idea of how they are used. One of the most recent projects has been the 1001 FlatWorld Tales project completed by Mrs. M’s fourth grade class. Check out their persuasive stories here!
We are using social networking in grade 5, grade 4 and grade 2 to connect our students with others around the world to discuss our learning. Our grade 5 Ning is focused on engaging highly able readers through discussion about books, themes and characters. Our grade 4 Ning is focused on delving deeper into our science curriculum by presenting, sharing and discussing big issues about water. Our grade 2 Ning connects our class with a partner grade 2 class in the US to learn more about intercultural understanding. All of our Nings are password protected and private - meaning only students, teachers and parents involved in the project can see the work the students are doing.
As an extra bonus, we watched two more videos that cover some other web 2.0 tools that our students are not using yet (but they will be soon!):
Now that we’ve covered the basics of web 2.0, the homework assignment for this session is to leave a comment here, on this blog post! You can leave a comment about something interesting you learned during the session, or a further question, or an idea for the topic of our next session, or anything else you’re interested in! We look forward to continuing our discussion here!
Our next session will be: Wednesday, April 23rd at 7:30 in the Project Zone of the Learning Hub. Please join us!
The students in Singapore and the United States will leave comments and questions for Mrs. S’s class on their class blog, and we will do the same for them. These blogs are an exciting and motivating way to help students with their writing and reading skills, as well as allow them to develop friendships with other third graders around the world!
We know our kids are communicating and collaborating online as a regular part of their lives - in fact, their online “lives” are just as real to them as their “physical” lives. So, what happens online can be just as hurtful as more traditional playground bullying.
Basically, we’re dealing with a new playground: the digital playground.
These videos are great conversations starters - both at home and at school - for discussing appropriate online behavior, and online safety. Here at school we have had some fantastic discussions with students after watching these videos - often it takes an entire hour (or more) to really build student’s understanding of these short public service announcements.
If our kids are out on the digital playground every day, using tools like instant messaging, Facebook, cell phones, and blogs, then:
Who is teaching students about responsibility online?
When do we start to teach these skills?
What role do parents play?
Here at school we are discussing these big issues with our students. However, it is critical that these same types of discussions are happening at home as well. The message of online safety and appropriate behavior needs to be infused into any online activity that students participate in - both at school and at home.
Often even casual conversations while playing online can prompt a real, influential learning experience for students.
We know that:
Cyberbullying is harmful to children, and it happens more often than we know.
Educators and parents must teach children Cybersafety from an early age so that they can safely interact with others online
Communications and conversations with your child/student is important in deterring and detecting cyberbullying.
It’s important to realize that there are a variety of ways that students can experience cyberbullying. Here are 8 forms of Cyberbullying:
Flaming: Using inflammatory or vulgar words to provoke an online fight
Harassment: Continually sending vicious, mean, or disturbing e-mails to an individual
Denigration: Spreading rumors, lies or gossip to hurt a person’s reputation
Impersonation: Posting offensive or aggressive messages under another person’s name
Outing: Posting or sharing confidential or compromising information or images
Trickery: Fooling someone into sharing personal information which you then post online
Exclusion: Purposefully excluding someone from an online group
Cyberstalking: Ongoing harassment and denigration that causes a person considerable fear for his/her safety
Along with cyberbullying, we need to think about online safety, another excellent video to prompt conversations is Think Before You Post:
Keeping the computer in a commonly used space, and being a part of your child’s online life are the first steps to preventing cyberbullying and teaching online safety.
Web links to help parents talk to their children about online safety:
Mrs. R and Ms. H’s classes have just finished a fabulous globally collaborative project, called “Life ‘Round Here,” with students from 11 different schools around the world! The goal of the project was to allow students to share their personal viewpoint about life in their country and to connect with other students to get a “kid’s eye” view into life in different countries.
Here at ISB, we were very excited to work on this project as part of our Adaptation unit. Building on the concepts of how Native Americans adapted to the challenges of their environment, we developed questions to connect our learning to our personal experience.
Our essential questions for this unit were:
What is life like here in Thailand?
How have we adapted to life in Thailand?
How have Thai people adapted to the influence of international culture?
Because we have such a diverse student population, we were able to create groups of students with similar cultural backgrounds to tell the story of their adaptation to Thailand. In Mrs. R’s class we had Korean, European, Japanese and Taiwanese, and American groups, each telling their own story of how life in Thailand is different than in their home countries, and how they have had to adapt to their new lives here. We also had a Thai group that reflected on how Thai culture has adapted to the influence of international culture. In Ms. H’s class we also had European, American, and Thai groups. In addition, we had an Asian group (with students from Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, and Korea), a Kuwait group, and a South American group. You can find all of our completed movie on the IT’s Elementary podcast channel!
These projects took us about a month to complete. We started by watching a sample video to get our classes excited about the project. We developed a list of tips for creating a quality digital story:
kept it simple
you can learn lots of information from a video
use effects only when needed, when they enhance the content (not so many that they’re distracting)
integrate different types of images (like screen shots of Google Earth)
make sure music fits with the slideshow
use titles to organize your movie into main themes - this needs to be planned in advance
use categories within categories to further organize
keep the titles consistent
photos can represent a lot about a topic
We then brainstormed our big ideas for each group project. In our groups we discussed:
What is the story we would like to tell about our adaptation to Thailand?
What are the key points we need to highlight?
Next, we wrote detailed scripts based on our big ideas and found pictures that tell the story visually.
Finally, this week, we put all the stories together into group iMovie projects - first adding our pictures, then titles to organize the sections, and then recording our voices.
Our completed digital stories are posted on the Life ‘Round Here ISB page, so please check them out! Here’s one sample project from Mrs. R’s class to get you started:
You can also view the other digital stories from our internationally collaborative partners here.
Over the next few days we will spend some time reflecting on our learning, watching the completed videos, and even conducting a Skype video conference with some of the participants from other international schools! This has been an exciting, engaging and motivating experience for both the students and the teachers. We can’t wait to read some of their personal reflections about this adventure! We will be posting our stories on our individual student blogs (linked here on the sidebar) beginning next week. Feel free to read and comment anytime!
Our discussion focused on the importance of conversations – both at home and at school – about our children’s digital lives. We want our children to know that their parents and teachers are just as involved in their digital lives, as they are in their personal and school lives. This is the only way that we can truly teach them how to be responsible and stay safe online – just like we teach them to be responsible and safe when using a scissor or crossing the road.
This week many of our parents took the time to share strategies and successes for how they deal with technology in their homes. We had lots of great discussions about the appropriate age for an online presence, and how to facilitate the use of technology in a safe way both at home and at school based on our experience with best practice in technology education. We are all working together to ensure that our students learn how to learn with technology so that they are prepared for their future!
Please join us for our next parent coffee morning on Wednesday, November 21st at 7:30 in the Learning Hub.
Mrs. M’s class used a 
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